Chương 41: 41-Confounded

Combusken takes a deep breath in just like his friend taught him, holds it, then releases in a slow exhale. He's calm. The extremely relaxed chicken carefully picks up a metal cube, a different symbol carved on each side, and turns it over in his hands until he finds the one he wants, then tries to push it into the matching slot on the wall.

"We already tried that!" Combusken rips the block out the wall and throws it at the idiot!" Shut up! At least I'm trying something!" He screams back. Orwel watches the block sail by, far to the left of him, then roughly scrubs his face with his hands and cries out in anguish as Combusken angrily picks up another metal block and stares back at the wall. They've been in this room for over an hour! He doesn't even know how long they've been in this stupid gym!

Combusken pauses as he hears the metal beneath him start to pop and groan with the heat, and forcibly pulls his fire back inside. Deep breath in. … Slowly breathe out. The 'mon calmly opens his eyes and stares at the puzzle on the wall. Four empty slots, above each a set of three different colored symbols in a circle, and below a series of unlit light panels. Breathe in, and out.

"Have we tried red squiggly, green half circle, yellow line, blue triangle?" At the question Orwel removes his face from his hands and looks down at his arms, now covered in a madman's mess of shapes and marks denoting color, the result of a pen but no paper.

"No…" The trainer hums.

"But yellow line and blue triangle are on the same block anyways… but if we…" Seeing his friend has an idea, Combusken quickly grabs the block he'd thrown across the room and pulls the rest from the wall just in time for Orwel to look up with a triumphant expression.

"I got it!" He cheers, "Red squiggly, green half circle, blue line, orange triangle!" Combusken crows in victory as he quickly turns the blocks over in his hands. He knew they could do it! He slots the first in, two lights below illuminate. The second, it drops to one. The third, it goes up to three. And the fourth – The last light illuminates, but the second light turns off. There's a beat of silence, where all Combusken can hear is his heartbeat in his ears.

Before a resounding clang as he throws his whole body into the most powerful kick he can muster against the door. Then another. Then one more before Combusken falls over backwards, clutching his talon in pain as unyielding metal hits back just as hard and screaming out with a unique combination of pain and rage. He swears, he swears that he'll find this 'Wattson' person, and when he does Combusken is going to make the man pay for doing this to him!

The chicken's internal vow is interrupted by his friend lightly tapping him on the shoulder, not leaving his hand in contact for too long which is normal when the 'mon gets too hot. Opening his misty eyes –with tears of rage – Combusken lifts his head and croaks out an inquisitive chirp.

"What?" Orwel points at the puzzle, staring at the lights that had all turned off.

"Look." The 'mon flinches at the sight. Did he break – To the side, a section of wall slides open to reveal a long hallway with another room at the other end. At the sight Combusken throws himself off the ground and toward it"We did it! He shouts, running ahead of his friend as the human takes a moment to recall Matchop from where he's sleeping in the corner of the room.

But just as Combusken gets halfway down the hall, and Orwel steps into the beginning, both openings slam shut and a second later the floor drops away. Tumbling, Combusken scratches and flails to find purchase on the walls as it turns into a slide, sending them faster and faster through the dark before spitting them out into some grass.

Combusken rolls to a stop, springing to his feet in one smooth motion with fire at the ready to fight– They're in an empty courtyard, the twilight sun tinging the nearly dark sky a barely perceptible purple. After a moment he realizes he recognizes the courtyard, it's the one he'd fought his rival in before entering the gym. Then a fake voice comes from behind.

"The Official Mauville City Gym is now closed, we're sorry for the inconvenience, our operating hours are located at the front desk to your le–" The voice is drowned out by another clang as Combusken throws himself through the air and kicks the door with all his strength, then crumbles to the grass with a pained shriek, followed shortly by his partner. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

—-- –_– —-- Tanya sighs as she pulls a pin from its cup of alcohol and stabs it into her arm with no change of expression, pulling it away and dipping the pin back into the alcohol before hovering her other arm over the wound. Using a heal pulse on herself takes nearly triple the energy than on someone else for a quarter the result, so many limiting factors allowing for so much more energy to be just enough. Her hovering arm begins to faintly sparkle green, matched by a tiny space of oozing blood.

All she needs to do, is release the smallest possible amount of energy to just heal the wound and no furthe– Her entire body emits a burst of green sparkles and the wound heals, and Tanya sighs at yet another failure before grabbing a wet cloth to remove the tiny amount of blood. Damn.

In a discussion, Amelia had brought up some interesting ideas linking her difficulty restraining her energy with her similar challenges in learning minimize, backing her theory with some suggested training strategies she'd read in a different book. Chansey gives a sympathetic coo as she throws a pile of warm laundry onto the couch and hops up alongside.

"You're still stuck on that?" She asks, leaning closer to look at the pristine arm, waving away some sparkles as she does.

"Hm, you know I have the exact same problem around my birthday." Tanya pauses in reaching for another pin from the alcohol and glances at the other 'mon.

"Oh?" She asks.

"Any advice?" Chasney smiles apologetically and shakes her head.

"Patients just get healed really well for a few days, sorry."

"It's alright" Tanya hums, waving off the apologetic look. Her work on restraining her power has been showing results, albeit slowly.

"Would you like me to give notes on your own practice?" At the question Chansey grins as she looks back at the pile of laundry and, after a moment of intense focus, her eyes gain a stuttering purple glow as an article of clothing wavers into the air and begins to fold itself.

"I actually think I'm getting the hang of it!" Tanya, watching the now folded shirt rest gently on the table and another rise from the pile, has to admit that Chansey has gotten much better since she started trying to learn the skill. Still…

"You're still just generating psychic energy and using it to grab and lift." She says, her own eyes gaining a purple tinge and four items of clothing rising at once.

"If you use a point motion array it's more efficient on energy with only marginally more computation." Chansey's smile gains an exasperated tinge as she keeps her eyes on the floating shirt.

"Of course, but I think I'm happy with this." She muses, grabbing a skirt with a laugh.

"If I focus any harder on the psychic math I couldn't watch my shows!"

"Dont start without me!" Venessa calls from the other room, presumably because she'd heard the word 'shows'.

"We're not! Don't worry!" Chasney calls back with a roll of the eyes, transitioning to a pleased chirrup as she stares at the tv remote for a second before it begins to float toward her. Tanya's stomach also takes the moment to alert her that it's not satisfied by the dinner, nor the several cups of pokechow she'd had after the fact, so the 'mon hops off the couch and walks back toward the guest room where their things are almost completely packed for their departure the day after tomorrow.

As she gets to the hall the 'mon has to consciously keep herself in the exact center of the narrow space to avoid knocking anything off the walls. She's… pretty sure her size is reaching a plateau at around 164 centimeters, about 150% the size of the average of her line, as her rate of growth has been slowing. The 'mon enters the guest room and scoops the last of the pokechow from her most recent bag and tosses it back in two large bites.

At the same time her hunger hasn't gotten any less intense, if anything it's gotten worse. But the professionals say that she's not showing any symptoms of obesity or overeating, so until that changes she's stuck indulging her increasingly absurd caloric intake.

The rate of consumption means she's probably going to have to buy some more snorlax chow before they leave, because while Mauville is large enough to have specialty stores for the food their next destination of Lavaridge has almost no chance of having her food in stock. Folding the empty pokechow bag, Tanya carefully walks back through the hall to the main room and sees Taillow and Amelia taking up the kitchen countertop.

The duo are still staring at the empty soda can across from them, same as when she last saw them. At the sight of the bird, she's reminded of the other avian she'd met earlier today. Not that she'd been watching too closely, but the TV in the pokecenter lobby is permanently set to the gym battle channel where a live feed is broadcasted for every fight, broken up by commercial breaks between matches.

She'd left the room several times, and wasn't paying too much attention to the screen regardless, but the fact that she didn't see Combusken even once does strike her as a bit odd. On the countertop, Taillow squints before flaring his wings and bringing them together as if in a clap, creating a wave of wind that makes the can wobble, but not fall. At the result the 'mon merely grumbles and retucks his wings as Amelia adjusts the can.

"Again." She says before lightly pulling a wing away from his side and tapping the leading edge.

"Remember, you already do this when you're trying to get more power out of a wing flap at speed. Try to–""On the downstroke, I know" Taillow interrupts, pulling the wing out of her grip and ruffling his feathers. Apparently air slash is proving more difficult than they'd thought, the plan had been for Taillow to be creating the first stable blade of wind yesterday, yet here they are.

"Imagine you're scooping the air," the trainer says, pushing their target closer.

"How about we–""Hey! I'll get it!" Taillow crows.

"Dont move the can!" Tanya shoves the empty pokechow bag into the appropriate recycling bin and turns back into the living room area just as Chansey switches the TV input channel from a newscast –covering Team Magma yet again– to the solid blue of the VCR's standby screen and Venessa steps into the living room, her hair in a towel.

"Alright lets get started!" She cheers, plopping herself down next to her partner and mushing into her bulk at the 'mon switches to the appropriate track and starts rewinding back to the start of the tape. Seeing this, Amelia quickly disengages herself from Taillow and heads over to the couch as Sylveon trots into the room and takes his customary spot, which just so happens to be where the warm laundry is right now.

Taillow glances at Tanya as everyone but them gets settled in front of the TV as sound and video appear on screen with an analog crackle. Tanya doesn't blame him for being confused, their 'shows' are all various and increasingly bizarre daytime television quiz shows and obstacle courses, each using the barest structure of a game to give some kind of pretense to two people having a pool noodle fight on a balance beam ten metres in the air, while simultaneously answering trivia questions.

Venessa is at work when they're normally on, so Sylveon records them on the VCR and they watch them after dinner before bed. Tanya glances back at the TV as the title card fades into view, accompanied by a panning shot to the cheering studio audience and a jaunty tune, and sighs before waving for Taillow to follow and walking toward the couch. She's not got anything better to do, and the shows can be entertaining, in the lowest common denominator kind of way.

The 'mon gets to the couch just as one of the three hosts introduces himself and, seeing no room for her, resigns herself to sit on the floor in front. But just as she settles in and the host begins introducing the contestants, Amelia slides down from her slightly cramped position wedged between Chansey and the arm of the couch, and settles next to her partner, just far enough away to not be touching as she folds her legs.

The movement seems to remind Venessa of something, pausing in her gentle scratching around Sylveon's ears –seemingly dead to the world in under two minutes– she looks down at her niece.

"Amelia, tomorrow, do you mind helping Sylveon with grocery shopping after your morning shift?" She asks as the contestants introduce themselves.

"He always complains about having to break up big shopping trips into multiple days to carry everything." The trainer glances up and nods.

"No problem." She says, and Venessa smiles.

"Well thank you very much, how about you pick dinner for your last da– ooh it's starting!" She interrupts herself, eyes locking to the TV. Tanya sighs as the neon clad host gets the contestants to stand into two groups around the dual challenge and modifier wheels before beginning to explain today's special wheel rules. Certainly, there are worse ways to spend an evening.